Quandary 11/09/2013

Earlier this week I was told to gather up as many decent songs as I could and sound effects to put in the game to test. I gave my team a usb with all said files on it and had to run out due to personal family issues. They enjoyed most of them but thought they were a bit too sharp and loud. So I’ll have to fix that up next. I feel like I haven’t talked enough about the overall progress of the game, so better late then never. The game I feel is going well as a game. The touch input is something we’re stressing about so much, not just to get it working, but for it to be fun as well. A while back I threw an idea to Will about having a pad with arrows in 8 directions. The player would tap whichever they wanted and would move one block (jumping included). Yesterday, Will said he was having problems with the joystick and Justin basically pitched the same thing. So we’re going for that now. I felt like I should’ve been insulted in some way but honestly I didn’t care, Justin was a more reliable source of idea giving. Will asked if everyone was okay with the idea, which I said yes to obviously. The joystick would make the player feel like it was the games fault that he/she was failing. Which it would’ve been.

Quandary 08/09/2013

After a week of drawing up posters and art prints, we decided it was best that I went back to working on sound. Mainly because we want to have all our assets done by Friday this week. That way we can tinker with what we have and prepare for a more solid Alpha coming after the week holiday. So we had a meeting on Friday and made a list of all sound assets we need. I’ve finished most sound effects and added some music but we need to figure out which ones are going to stick.

Quandary 01/09/2013

So on Friday we all figured out what we were working on for the weekend. It was mainly just a group meeting kind of day, where we ruled out the things that were bugging us most and how we could overcome them. I told Will I wanted to get back into some art stuff this weekend to build my profile a bit more so I decided to work on some posters, concept art and drawings, which actually turned out a lot more impressive than I thought. More soon!

Quandary 29/08/2013

So yesterday and today during our mid-week break I began designing levels. I woke up, got my sketch book and sat down to draw down a design. To my surprise, nothing came out on paper. I spent so much time just staring at the paper in front of me, and occasionally drawing a cube hoping something would come out. It turns out level design for Quandary is going to be hard. Like really hard. I attempted to find a source of inspiration from previous games like Braid and Portal 2, but really there’s the fundamental difference which is the individual mechanics these games poses. Braid is much a puzzler yes but it’s built around its time shifting mechanic. Portal 2 has the portal gun which allows the use of portals. So really Quandary will be all about different mechanics, but it lacks its main mechanic. The mechanic that it falls back on for puzzles, so basically we need to explore different mechanics like time slow or portals, but they won’t be a main mechanic, they’ll just be in there for a couple of levels. We’ll have to wait and see. See you tomorrow.

Quandary 27/08/2013

The prototype went well. Basically as much as we wanted it to. Everything we wanted to show was demonstrated, everything we wanted to explain was explained. The prototype is also a great starting point for our new phase, which is basically everyone starting and thinking about challenging levels and new mechanics. We had a team meeting after the presentation just to make sure everyone was on the same page with that, it’s important that our team understands that the game needs to be challenging. Otherwise it’s just a game with no real fun. It’s not what we’d want with Quandary. Anyway, more coming.

Quandary 26/08/2013

Today we began brushing up our prototype for tomorrow. This included new formatting and bug fixes, just making sure everything is ready.

Quandary 25/08/2013

11:00am So I’ve taken a few days for myself to relax, and come back this morning to see that Will and Josh have been working hard on compiling all our assets for the prototype. I love my team. Anyway, so they’ve put in some sounds that I’ve created and put on dropbox, I’m not sure which they’ve chosen. Hopefully they’ll get back to me on which ones need improving. 6:00pm Made great progress on sound today. Will listed the songs he likes and thinks should be in menu and in game, and edited according to what he thought would work. I got a copy of the prototype, which is great for a tech demo, but the menu needs touching up. I think that it’s fine to show off the functionality of the menus and customization, however it’s not at all finished. I think the main idea for our prototype is getting all functionality finished. That way after Tuesday we can just polish it up and create interesting and challenging levels.